In the wake of Epik LLC’s completed acquisition of Intrust Domains’ domain registry business, Epik is pleased to announce the introduction of Epik Registrar Services. With Epik Registrar, you can now acquire domain names and have them appear instantly in your Epik portfolio. We believe that Epik’s ability to couple mainline registrar services with domain name backorder and drop catching services makes Epik Registrar the preferred place to search for and acquire high quality domain names. And once acquired, Epik can help you scalably and cost-effectively develop those domains on one of our several domain development platforms.

The introduction of registrar services is yet another facet of Epik’s vision of Integrated Domain Asset Management. Epik is the only company in the world that integrates the entire domain name value chain — Acquire, Build, Manage and Divest — into one platform. Whether you have one domain or one thousand, Epik’s integrated approach offers market-leading solutions that help maximize the value of your domain name assets.

By coupling these management capabilities with a highly knowledgeable customer service team and extremely competitive pricing, Epik is committed to ensuring that the decision to make Epik your primary registrar will always be a simple one.

But at Epik, we want to be more than just your registrar. And we want more than to help you develop web sites. Epik’s goal, now and always, is to be your strategic partner in building online success. That is why we have spent so much time and effort building not only development tools, but the entire market ecosystem necessary to turn domains in a financial asset class that will help you meet your financial goals. Domains as an asset class are profoundly interesting, particularly when managed in a strategic, lifecycle-centric way. And today’s launch is a critical component of that management approach.

Building the Registrar. And More.

Rather than building a new registrar from scratch, we have acquired the registrar business of IntrustDomains. This includes their customers, but most importantly, their extremely robust management tools developed over the last several years and the development team that built it.

With the new development team, we plan to re-implement our other admin and reporting systems using the registrar system as its core. It would be a gross understatement to say that I am excited to have this team of talented engineers in our corner. With them and their battle-tested code, we have all the pieces in place to turn our vision of domain lifecycle management tools into reality. You should expect to see the registrar admin console evolve into an entirely new lifecycle manager that will provide a single place from which to acquire domains, initiate their development, manage their content, and track their performance.

One important thing to note about the system. A domain investor may have a large number of names spread across multiple registrars. The Epik Registrar enable users to view all domains they have at Epik, even if they are not using Epik as the primary registrar for some or all of their portfolio. Domains registered through Epik (“internal” domains) will be fully manageable from a domain point of view (e.g whois, etc.) while certain functions will necessarily be unavailable to an “external” domain, that is, a domain registered through, say, GoDaddy. That said, our goal is to provide not just a registry service but an integrated approach to managing one’s entire domain portfolio. There will always be actions that we cannot execute for external domains, and we do recommend that users transfer their registrations to Epik where possible. But it is not a requirement. This makes Epik unique in the industry, and it is a natural consequence of our goal of providing integrated domain asset management for one’s entire portfolio.

Just the Beginning

Today’s introduction of registrar services is only the first of many related initiatives that will roll out over the coming weeks. For example, we will soon roll out smart domain search capabilities. While the search for a specific domain may determine that it is unavailable, there may well be a dozen similar names that are available. Our new tools will soon help you find alternative names that you can acquire.

We will also be rolling out acquisition and development bundles to help you quickly turn your newly acquired domains into high performing sites. And an upcoming integration with Masterbucks will make it even easier to pay for development and consulting services.

I also encourage you to offer your suggestions; your input to our development roadmaps is always greatly appreciated.

Some Administrivia

The registrar services are available at registrar.epik.com. Existing Epik customers who have been accessing admin.epik.com through their Identity.net IDs will find these same credentials will grant them access to the register admin system, and that their domain portfolio should have been moved over.

Similarly, those of you who had accounts at IntrustDomains.net will find that your portfolios have also been moved over, and are accessible using your preexisting login credentials. Those of you familiar with the Intrust registrar will notice that we have made some UI changes, some more substantial than others. Other UI improvements will be ongoing as we more deeply integrate the system into other Epik workflows; that said, you should find the system quite familiar and easy to navigate the UI enhancements.

Conclusion

With the introduction of Epik Registrar, our ability to help you manage the full lifecycle of your domain(s) has being greatly amplified. The combination of registry services, backorders, drop catching, and of course our domain development platforms, make Epik the idea place to start turning domain names into valuable investments.

If you already have an account, we encourage you to explore the system. And if you are new to Epik, create an account and get started with Epik Registrar!